More than an inch of rain soaked the Bay Area Sunday, the prelude to what forecasters expect will be a stormy week punctuated by a wet Christmas Day.

Rain and high winds caused substantial power outages to customers in the Santa Cruz Mountains and in the South Bay, PG&E officials said. Sierra Nevada ski resorts reported 12 to 18 inches of fresh snow early Sunday, a dumping that is expected to repeat nearly every night until Saturday.

"It's a decent little storm," said Angus Barkhuff, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. "It's just coming on in waves, and it'll make for good snow accumulation by the time it's done."

Off-and-on showers will pelt the Bay Area until late Tuesday, when a persistent downpour is expected to stick around for at least a day or two, said forecaster Bob Benjamin.

Thursday and Friday will be rainy, though with breaks of sunshine. However, "Christmas Day looks like a rainy one," Benjamin said.

Among the wettest cities on Sunday was Half Moon Bay, with 1.74 inches of rain for the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m., the weather service reported. Oakland saw 1.7 inches, and downtown San Francisco had 1.14 inches.

PG&E officials said thousands of customers lost power this weekend due to downed power lines and equipment malfunctions brought on by the stormy weather.

By Sunday evening, about 560 customers on the Peninsula were without power, along with around 700 in the East Bay, another 700 in the South Bay and nearly 250 in the North Bay. PG&E expected that all those customers would have power by midnight, a spokesman said.

In Palo Alto, investigators were trying to determine if a rain-slicked roadway near the intersection of Middlefield Road and Hawthorne Avenue played a role in a single-car accident that killed a 20-year-old male driver early Saturday.

In many places, rain totals for the year are well ahead of last year's pace. Downtown San Francisco has seen 8.97 inches so far, compared with 5.89 inches a year ago. The Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa has had 13.97 inches, versus 7.31 inches last year.

Diners and shoppers enjoying Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood Sunday night generally said the weather was inconvenient, but that it wouldn't alter any holiday plans.

Scott Strong of Oakland offered a reminder for Bay Area residents tempted to grouse about the weather.

"It's a drought state," he said. "We complain when we don't get enough rain, but when it comes too frequently we want it to stop. Californians can never be satisfied."